Some thoughts on wikiwork

A few days ago I posted an idea on my LJ related to RaceFail 09. I thought it might be a good idea to collect posts, links, connections, and commentary in a wiki. Wikis are quite good for that sort of thing. I got several responses and a lot of people brought up good points about whether it’s wise or even useful to have a separate wiki just for this. It would go well with an existing wiki, perhaps one dealing with race and cultural issues in SF fandom and the community.

That was actually my original thought, and where I really feel this would go best is a wiki for the Carl Brandon Society. Thing is, CBS doesn’t have a wiki yet. There’s been much interest expressed, but the snag is (as always) time and peoplepower. CBS is a volunteer effort and most of the people involved are very busy – passionate people tend to be.

I was glad to hear that there is an impetus to create a wiki on race and media fandom, which would go perfectly with CBS, I think. The thing is, I don’t want the RaceFail stuff to be the majority of the wiki to start. I feel like the inauguaration of such a wiki should be first and foremost a place of win as it gets established. Then bring in the fail as it relates.

Maybe I’m being silly on that point, though.

Liz Henry indicated that documenting RaceFail on the FeministSF wiki would not be outside of the scope of that project. And since that wiki has been in existence for a while it would seem less weird to me.

In a perfect world, here’s what I would like to happen:

For all of the POC and allies who so passionately wrote about, commented on, documented and provided moral support around RaceFail to contribute to putting together that section on the FeministSF Wiki. You don’t need to document everything – if everyone mainly stuck to the aspects they were involved in, we’d have a pretty complete history of it.

For those same people to get involved with the Carl Brandon Society in general and to volunteer to help do some initial work on that wiki. Again, if we get a lot of people doing small but significant chunks of work over time (no wiki is built in a day!) then we can build something really wonderful. I think that the web committee would agree that media fandom is just as important an aspect as the lit side of the community. It’s all connected.

Eventually, we can copy stuff about RaceFail 09 over to the CBS wiki.

On a related note, I was talking to Victor Raymond the other day about the possibility of having some cultural appropriation discussions of non-DOOM either on the CBS mailing list or the blog.

Note the “see also” links to the 2007 and 2008 WisCon cultural appropriation panels, which have sections of “links and references” where we made a quick stab at rounding up entry points to the online discussions.

I was also thinking the CBS mailing list would be a good place to have a real, substantive conversation about issues surrounding cultural appropriation and related issues of racism in SF (both literature and fandom), and lets just say writing outside your comfort zone. I don’t really have a web presence of my own, and so have failed miserably in trying to offer support to people of color. I am so sick of hearing this framed as a “debate” or as an issue with sides. This is indeed a long, difficult, often painful discussion (and I am so tired of other white people complaining about hurt feelings – when if our wee feelings are hurt, we get to walk away. You don’t). As a white person, I’m not going to propose how the CBS mailing list be used, but if you and Victor think this is a good idea, I say yes, yes, and please.

I have no idea whether the CBS needs wiki hosting or anything like that, but if it does, you might check out PBWiki. It’s a free wiki service (there’s also a pay version but the free one is really full-featured) and I’ve been using it for years.

(In general I’m happy to help with technical foo, you know where to find me if you’ve got any questions.)

I will definitely play in late February and early March. I do a fair amount on the feminist SF wiki anyway.

I'm a speculative fiction writer by night, a media critic and culture columnist by day, and an activist blogger in the interstices. I enjoy science fiction, fantasy, short stories, harshing your squee about that thing you love, and squeeing hard about that thing I love, in that order.